Janet Brown

It is extremely fitting that we dedicate this issue of the Reader, which celebrates twenty-five years of publication in 2014, to Tommer Peterson, Reader coeditor and deputy director and director of programs for GIA. He will be retiring at the end of 2014 after fourteen years at GIA. His talents as an editor, program developer, graphic designer, visual artist, playwright, diplomat, people wrangler, conference coordinator, deadline policeman, and humorist have helped GIA become a well-respected association serving the entire arts philanthropic community.

Grantmakers in the Arts embarks on an ambitious agenda in 2015. The board of directors has designated four primary areas of interest for us: arts education, financial health for the nonprofit arts sector, racial equity in arts philanthropy, and support for individual artists. You will see these themes appear in the Reader, in our web conferences, in sessions at our conference, on our news feed on the website, and at special national convenings.

Grantmakers in the Arts began work on capitalization in 2010. Ever since then we’ve debated not using the word “capitalization,” but it has prevailed. In our work, the term is synonymous with financial health and the resources needed to meet an organization’s mission. In 2010, GIA published recommendations for grantmakers regarding actions they could take that would improve the undercapitalized nature of the nonprofit arts sector.

Grantmakers in the Arts began its work to enhance the arts in federal education policy in 2012 when it created the Arts Education Funders Coalition, an interest group within GIA that is open to funders with an arts education passion and portfolio, whether they are members of GIA or not. Led by a small advisory committee, we contracted with Penn Hill Group, a Washington, D.C., policy and lobbying firm with expertise in education.

Caron Atlas, Project Director and Editor. 2011, 200 pages, Arts and Democracy Project, Brooklyn, New York

Bridge Conversations is an inspiring collection of interviews, dialogues, and essays with artists, arts administrators, activists, and politicians using the arts to build, reflect, and improve community. It is thoughtfully constructed and inclusive in those selected to participate, their topics, and their approaches.

In 2009, everyone was asking whether the change in the nonprofit sector was temporary, caused by the economic downturn or was the economy a catalyst that forced us to recognize that change had happened and this change was here to stay? I believe it was the latter. Pushed by technology, demographics, the changing behavior of audiences, and a disconnect between perception and the reality of the arts in our communities, there is a growing sense that funding changes are more necessary than we had first imagined.

At the 2009 GIA conference in Brooklyn, we asked participants to tell us how Grantmakers in the Arts can best contribute to building a successful nonprofit arts sector in this country over the next ten years. Participants provided 439 ideas, from which six strategies emerged. These strategies will drive the future work of GIA, which as a national association is uniquely positioned to serve the “greater good” of a vital sector of American society.

I have visited groups of GIA members and nonmembers in every region of the country this year, from Boston to Los Angeles and Atlanta to Seattle. It has been an interesting first year as executive director of GIA, to say the very least. What I have observed is that grantmakers have not taken a “recess” during this challenging time. In many ways, for private and community foundations especially, there could have been a pulling away from grantees, a kind of “we can’t help you” attitude.